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Comment by andreyf | Hacker News Reader

Out of the two examples he gives, you found that one to be more objectionable? How about...

According to my source, in addition to multi-touch, the other feature that Apple objected to was using a standard headphone jack. Apple apparently owns a patent on controlling software using buttons connected by a standard 3.5mm headphone jack (at least for music and video playback controls), and would not grant Google a license to the patent. Hence the G1’s use of a proprietary ExtUSB port rather than a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

Oh, really?

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A Google Patent search does not turn this up. Can anyone show us the patent?

http://www.google.com/patents?q=3.5+mm+inassignee%3AApple

That seems extremely unlikely at best, verging on a conspiracy theory.

It seems plausible to me - they're talking about the buttons on the wire going up to the buds communicating back to the device... I'm certainly no expert, but I can't think of any other devices that do that via a standard 3.5mm socket.

I had a CD player made by Panasonic around 1997 that used buttons on the wire to pause/play and skip songs.

I doubt they have a patent on the headphone thing. My Nokia N-series phone has a 3.5" headphone jack and it ships with an inline remote that is similar in functionality to the controls on an iPod shuffle. My Sony and Panasonic portable CD players from 10 years ago also had a similar thing.

I have an old MP3 player that has a volume control, play/pause and skip in the earbud wires that go to a 3.5mm jack (but the earbuds have a 4-conductor plug). Also, the 4-conductor 3.5mm doubles as the USB port for uploading songs to it. You can also use normal 3.5mm headphones with it, you just loose the volume control functions.

Nokia phones do it, at least the N95.

Apparently a lot of the HTC smartphones (of which the G1 is one) use the same USB audio connector scheme. If Apple made any demands, it was to HTC, not Google... which strikes me as unlikely, too.

I highly doubt Apple tried to move Google off of the 3.5 mm jack. There are plenty of phones and other devices even now that have a 3.5 mm jack and controls in the headphone wire.

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